Greetings From 42 Years Ago...

This past weekend I went to a friend’s birthday party at a beautiful house high on a hill overlooking the Silverlake reservoir in Los Angeles. The street the house is on is the steepest street in Los Angeles.

As I drove up the hill my heartbeat began to accelerate... higher and higher.... shifting from third gear to first gear... my fear of heights was rearing its ugly head.... As I reached the peak I couldn’t see anything in front of me but blue sky. Was that heaven in the distance beckoning me? If I kept driving would I fall off the face of the earth into the abyss that would take me straight to hell?

I took my chances and kept driving and over the peak I slowly went and what I saw was the steepest decline I’d ever seen. Fearful of parking on such a steep hill I continued halfway down before parking my car, facing my wheels into the curb, and pulling the emergency break as far as it would go.

I then looked at the address I had written down and realized the house was at the top of the hill so I had to climb... and climb... and climb. I never looked back until I got to the top. Wow, the view was incredible. The reservoir below. The Hollywood sign in the distance. Absolutely spectacular.

At the party there was plenty of food, drink, old friends, new friends, conversation, and laughter.

As a special present one of the birthday girl’s childhood friends brought two letters the birthday girl wrote while a teenager studying dance in Spain. The letters were written in April and May, 1967. That’s 42 years ago.

The birthday girl read the letters aloud, at times astonished at what she’d written, laughing at her naivete, her hopes and dreams, and her passion for dancing. It was quite the touching moment where everyone ooohed and aaahed and reflected on their own dreams.

Times change. People grow. And sometimes people forget. But a letter from 42 years ago brings back special moments in time.

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